


With monsters much bigger than I can control

by Tia_Gem



Series: Love is how all these ideas came to be, a Lal Lived AU [2]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bullying, Data Has Android Emotions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Daughter Relationship, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Lal Lived AU, Lal is a sweetie but she's still a teenager and teens are dramatic, Minor Original Character(s), Not Beta Read, Teenagers, We Die Like Men, he's just stubborn and doesn't understand them, really only mentioned in passing, she's also never been bullied before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 03:06:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30116208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tia_Gem/pseuds/Tia_Gem
Summary: Data finds Lal crying in her room after being bullied for the first time.AU where Lal survived, but not unscathed. Sequel to "I just want to start a flame in your heart."
Relationships: Data & Lal (Star Trek)
Series: Love is how all these ideas came to be, a Lal Lived AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2216175
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	With monsters much bigger than I can control

**Author's Note:**

> Context for this is in "I just want to start a flame in your heart", but it's not specifically necessary to read. I'd recommend reading it anyway, just because I'm rather proud of it. 
> 
> Title is from "Panic Room" by Au/Ra. 
> 
> Being a teenager is hard. It's even harder when you're an android and you just narrowly avoided death. Data should count himself lucky he was never a teen.
> 
> I've got a whole collection of drabbles in my docs concerning this AU of mine. It's one that's been in the works for a few years now but I've never felt confident enough to write out. I'm always afraid my AUs stray too far from canon and that no one will like them because they're too different. This is one I'm especially passionate about, though, in light of recent events in my personal life. 
> 
> I also still have not watched a full episode of TNG since 2016. I've been watching clips on YouTube to get a better grasp on how the characters talk and act, but for the most part this is going off my fragmented childhood memories.
> 
> I had fun attempting to write Data here, writing an emotionless character is always a challenge and one I thoroughly enjoy. 
> 
> Happy reading!

Data had never been so distracted during a shift before. Dare he say, he was even eager for it to end. It was the first time Lal had been left (very nearly) without supervision since she had been brought back and if Data was anyone else, he would've been nervous. Terrified, even. 

(It wasn't that he didn't trust Wesley, he was a good friend and very understanding but if anything was to go wrong, if Lal was to become overstimulated and relapse, Data was not convinced that Wesley would be able to keep her stable in the very small amount of time it would take for Data to be alerted and arrive. He was a child, and couldn't request for a site-to-site transfer like any adult on the ship could, nor did he know anything about Lal's positronic composition.)

He was fully prepared for Lal to be home by the time he was released from duty, given that Wesley's lunch hour ended several hours before Data's shift did. He expected her to be happy, eager to talk about every detail of her lunch with her friend, unable to sit still in her excitement. 

How surprised Data was when he entered his and Lal's personal quarters to find her nowhere in sight, her bedroom door closed and the muffled sound of a choir of cellos and violins beyond it. 

It was a quick deduction that lunch had not gone quite as planned. Data hoped that nothing bad had happened between Lal and Wesley, he was the only friend she had and was one of the few people keeping her from being too lonely. He listened for another one-point-three seconds and decided that no, it was something else. This song was from Lal's emotional playlist, a deep and sad tune that would end in a hopeful collection of notes. If she was angry, she would most likely be listening to piano.

Data waited until the song was ending to chime Lal's door, and it took several (sixteen-point-five-two) seconds for her to respond with a small and watery "enter."

Lal's room was uncharacteristically messy, papers from one of her sketchbooks strewn about the floor. Lal herself was also on the floor, curled up in a tight ball with her head hidden in her arms on top of her knees. Her fist was clenched around a paper tightly, grip strong enough to make her hand tremble. 

"What happened?" Data asked softly, sitting by her and crossing his legs. He put a hand on her shoulder, and frowned upon noting that she was trembling very slightly. 

(The last time Lal was this upset was when he'd refused to allow her to join classes with the other children on the ship. He wanted her to have a better grasp of her limitations and emotional wellbeing before exposing her to public classes, and even Deanna agreed that she wasn't quite ready for that amount of stress and stimulation that school carried. She'd locked herself in her room for an entire day and it had taken both Wesley and Geordi to coax her out.)

Lal sniffled and raised her head, tears falling from her dark eyes. She didn't look at Data, it was clear that even if she did she would only look right through him. "Father? Am I a freak?"

(freak: noun. 1. an unusual and unexpected event or situation. 2. a person, animal, or plant with abnormal physical features or traits, typically meant to insult)

Data ignored the way he bristled at the question. To say he hadn't expected some amount of harassment would be a lie, his own experiences were too numerous and common to dismiss that it would also happen to his child. He was not prepared for it to start so soon though. 

"We fit the unbiased denotation, but given the negative connotation of the word I would not use it to describe either of us, nor anyone else. Where did you hear it?" 

"One of Wesley's classmates. Wesley rejected her advances and she called me a freak when she left." Lal wiped at her eyes with her sleeve, even as more tears came unbidden. She made a frustrated noise and hid her face in her folded arms again. 

(Lal didn't like to cry; she'd told Data as much one day when she'd been upset about not being able to visit a planet they'd been stationed at briefly. She claimed it made her feel weak, and it blurred her vision which was as annoying as it was impairing. Data had offered to remove her ability to cry from her programming, but curiously she'd refused.)

Data's frown deepened. "Who is this classmate? I will contact her parents and have this behavior corrected immediately." 

Lal was quiet for thirty-six-point-nine-two 

seconds, and Data wondered if she was composing herself long enough to speak. "Her first name was Chelsea. I didn't ask for her surname." 

"Very well. I will look in the database for families onboard with teenage children named Chelsea." Data started to rise, because this was going to be rectified now, he wasn't going to sit idly by while his daughter was being treated poorly by a peer, but was stopped when Lal reached out and grabbed his sleeve gently. 

"Stay. Please?" Her voice was so small and broken, and Data found himself unable to refuse, similar to when Spot begged for treats or when Geordi asked for assistance with a personal project.

(He would wonder later if perhaps that he cared for her in a similar way, and would decide that the answer was too complicated to be quantified by words. The closest word he had for it was affection, but he was supposed to be incapable of that. He told himself that, despite Geordi and Lal both insisting that he must feel something, because why else would he have friends or want children?)

Data sat on the floor next to Lal and listened to her music with her, keeping her company the only way he knew how. Teenagers were fickle, he'd learned(fickle: noun. changing frequently, especially in regards to one's interests, affections, and preferences). It was best to allow Lal to choose how she wanted her company to behave, especially with her emotional state so unbalanced.

"May I bring attention to the paper in your hand?" he asked gently in an attempt to break the silence between them. Wordlessly, Lal handed the crumpled sheet to him. 

With the utmost care, Data straightened out the paper. It had been balled up and crushed several times in Lal's hands, the folds soft and torn and the top edge jagged as if it had been ripped from her sketchbook viciously. This abuse had made the usually thick parchment fragile, and even at his gentlest, Data tore the edges even further. 

It was not an empty paper, either. It was full of angry scribbles and smeared red and green watercolors. Underneath the chaos was a sketch, carelessly done and incomplete, of a self portrait. It appeared as though Lal had gotten frustrated partway through the drawing and had devolved into venting her emotions onto the paper itself. 

(Deanna had suggested to Lal to use art to express herself, since at the time she'd struggled to describe her emotions with words. It had helped Data learn expression as well, and he was beginning to recognize possible emotions in his own paintings, though he denied it externally. Lal had taken to artistic expression, as the idiom goes, like a duck to water, and already had filled up one sketchbook with so many different mediums that in order to close it, it had to be bound with a ribbon.)

"It's awful, I am going to burn it," Lal said simply, head still buried in her arms. "Safely, of course, away from other flammable materials." 

Data frowned. "Lal, I strongly request you do not burn your art pieces, even if you believe they are not worth keeping." He avoided adding that it was unnecessarily dramatic, because perhaps that was the only way she felt she could dispose of something she clearly detested so greatly. "I suggest you keep this and show it to Counselor Troi during your next appointment with her. It may assist her in your treatment." 

Lal's shoulders lifted in a small shrug. "All right, Father," she said quietly. It was similar to the voice she'd used when Data had refused a request of hers for the first time, the disappointment clear in her softly spoken words. 

She leaned on him, and molded herself to his side for comfort. It reminded him of the first time she'd had a panic attack from the overwhelming sensations she couldn't control, the sheer amount of noise and people all touching her, talking to her, surrounding her triggering her fight-or-flight subroutine. She'd run away that evening, crying and unable to understand why, or how to make it stop. He'd followed her and found her holed up in one of the Jefferies tubes in Engineering, and after some time he had managed to get in with her to comfort her. Lal had laid against him in the tiny space they could barely fit in together and stayed that way until Data convinced her to let him take her back to their quarters. 

(It was that night that he'd learned that due to the vast amount(approximately one thousand, seven hundred seventy-three) of manual repairs in her systems, her sensory input was permanently amplified and to adjust it would be to risk another catastrophic cascade.)

"Father, may I ask a… silly question?" Lal asked. She lifted her head up above her arms now, tear tracks fresh on her cheeks but the wetness leaving her eyes finally. 

(silly: adjective. having or showing a lack of common sense or judgement, foolish or absurd)

Data glanced down at his daughter. She felt so small against him, young and vulnerable and in need of protection. Logically he knew she was as strong as he was, at least in the physical sense, but she was still his child, and she needed him. "You may, but as Counselor Troi would say, there are no silly questions."

Lal flexed her hands briefly and nodded. "Why did she insult me?" she whispered. 

(An echo of laughter, cruel and wicked and aimed at his own misfortune. "You're nothin' but a machine, freak. A computer with a face. Star Fleet wouldn't let you anywhere  _ near _ command. Just give up and skip the extra steps and head down to the labs to be picked apart by the engineers, you're better off as a class experiment than a captain.")

"There are select people I have come across during my time in Star Fleet that are inclined to believe that I, and by extension you, am unfit to be considered a living being. These people look down upon those that are dissimilar, and I have since learned that it is a human behavior rooted in a lack of self confidence. Geordi once told me that they feel the urge to 'put others down in order to feel better about themselves'." Data gingerly put an arm around Lal's shoulders and pulled her imperceptibly closer. "Chelsea was unkind because of her own internally perceived inadequacies, not yours." 

Lal listened, nodding occasionally. She unwound her arms from her knees and slipped them around Data's chest instead. "Thank you. That was comforting." 

Data's hand drifted to Lal's hair and petted it as he would Spot. She relaxed further and he could feel the tension leave her shoulders. He glanced at the chaotic, angry sketch in his other hand. Before he could prevent himself from doing so, he turned his head and pressed a light kiss to her hair.

"You are welcome, my dear."


End file.
